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Scrivener Temporarily Withdrawn from MAS – UPDATE: Scrivener is available again

UPDATE 20/03/13: Scrivener is now back up for sale on the Mac App Store, and runs fine on 10.6.8. Thanks to all our Mac App Store users who have been very understanding about the issues we faced.

— ORIGINAL POST —

Scrivener has been temporarily removed from sale on the Mac App Store. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this will cause to our Mac App Store users, but unfortunately we have been left with little choice other than to take this measure. I’d like to stress that this is only a temporary measure and we hope that Scrivener will be available on the Mac App Store again within the next few days. (Note: As I write this, you may still see Scrivener available – we’ve pulled it, but it will take up to 24 hours before it disappears from all stores.)

The reason we have taken this action is that the current version available in the Mac App Store, Scrivener 2.4, will not install or run on OS X 10.6 and Apple will not allow us to release a bug-fix for this problem in a timely manner. This 10.6 problem is due to a bug in the receipt validation code that crept into this release – please see a full explanation in my blog post of two days ago:

2.4 was released on the App Store last Thursday night, after a week in the review queue. On Friday morning, as soon as I found out about the bug in 10.6’s receipt validation code, I submitted a bug fix, Scrivener 2.4.1, to Apple, and I asked for an expedited review. With this all in place, we had hoped that Scrivener 2.4.1 would be available to our Mac App Store users by Tuesday at the very latest, so that our 10.6 MAS users were not inconvenienced for more than a few days at the most. (There is no way to upload an immediate bug-fix to the Mac App Store – every update has to go through the review process, and even when an expedited review is granted, it can still take a while.)

Unfortunately, this has not been the case. It is nearly a week now since 2.4 became available, and we still do not know when 2.4.1 will pass review and be made available on the store. 2.4.1 was rejected on Monday night for a reason that didn’t make sense (the reviewer said it wasn’t sandboxed when it was). We followed this up and resubmitted, but were then told that the reviewers needed more time. Yesterday, I was informed that they want us to make some changes to Scrivener 2.4.1 before it can pass review. I was also informed that Scrivener 2.4, 2.3.1 and 2.3 should really have not passed review either, given the things they want us to change. (Please note that the things we have been asked to change are not bugs, but features Apple interpret as not meeting their App Store review requirements.) I asked if we could roll back to making an earlier version of Scrivener available on the store while we address these issues, but the only way to do that, apparently, is to resubmit the older version, but because the older versions have the same “issues”, then doing so wouldn’t help as the reviewers would reject the older version that had previously passed review anyway. In other words, we currently have no way to get a bug-fix to our 10.6 MAS users other than to keep going back and forth with Apple until they pass 2.4.1 for release. Nor is there any way to prevent 2.4 from being available to 10.6 users.

We can therefore not in good conscience continue to sell Scrivener on the Mac App Store knowing that any 10.6 users who buy it will not be able to use it.

As soon as 2.4.1, which fixes the problem, passes review, we will immediately make Scrivener available on the Mac App Store again. We very much hope that this will be in the next few days.

Again, I’d like to say sorry to any of our Mac App Store users that this will inconvenience. We will not leave you without a working version of Scrivener, though. If you are a Mac App Store user and this temporary removal of Scrivener from the store leaves you without a working version of Scrivener, please contact us. If you are on OS X 10.6 and bought Scrivener in the past week so that it will not run on your system, again, please contact us – we will get you up and running. Email us at mac.support@literatureandlatte.com with these issues. Thank you for patience and understanding in this matter.

(Incidentally, because of some of the changes we are being required to make, we cannot guarantee that Scrivener on the Mac App Store will have as good support for .docx, .doc and .odt formats in 2.4.1 and future releases. This does not affect the version on our site.)